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Steve Bruce admits he can see the similarities between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest as the two sides prepare to meet at Villa Park on Saturday evening.

Two of English football’s great clubs have struggled for consistency in recent times, chopping and changing managers at regular intervals along with new owners taking over, and Bruce, who has seen his side win just twice in the Championship so far this season, admits the Reds, like his Villa, are a club in transition.

The former Manchester United defender feels Forest have made a strong appointment in Mark Warburton following his arrival at the City Ground back in March.

Mark Warburton with David Weir at the Stadium of Light

“They’re in that transition with manager after manager and in Mark, there’s a very shrewd appointment and it’ll be a difficult game like they all are," he said.

Forest sit two points ahead of Villa in the table going into the 5:30pm kick-off in B6 and Bruce is under illusions about the size of the task facing his team on their own patch.

Villa have suffered a tough start to the season with Bruce coming under mounting pressure from fans and despite home defeat to Middlesbrough in Tuesday’s League Cup tie, they did record a 3-0 win at Barnsley last Saturday.

New Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis

"A good result always put everybody in a good frame of mind,” said Bruce.

"We’ve kept three clean sheets (in the league), and adding to that, Jonathan Kodjia is back.

"We got a break last week and we needed it.

"There’s an important week coming up before the international break.

"We let the eleven players focus on the week ahead and they are all fresh and fit.

"We will go as we did against Barnsley.

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Bruce, who made 11 changes for that 2-0 defeat to Garry Monk’s Boro, admits he’s gone against his principles of playing two strikers in a bid to stop the rot of defeats that saw them relegated from the Premier League and struggle in the second tier.

“We were in an awful place when I arrived, a team who had won five times in 18 months.”

Former Forest man Henri Lansbury (Image: Getty)

“Being difficult to beat, difficult to play against, organised on a defensive structure – that is the way I thought would take us forward, to try and stop the culture of getting beat. I’ll make no bones about that.

“I tried to open things up in January, too quickly. I bought people in – Henri Lansbury, Conor Hourihane and Scott Hogan – who had the top statistics in the division.